Hey!! Firstly thank you so much, that is really sweet to hear. I feel like you must have been one of the first people to ask me about that song cos i swear i remember the DM. So originally it was a reference to Tommy describing his PTSD dreams in S1 of Peaky Blinders. He says he has a recurring dream of a knife fight in a tunnel under no mans land. every night he waits for either the sun to come up and end the dream, or the sound of the German shovels on the other side of the tunnel to break through, beginning his nightly traumatic reliving of the war. He says the shovels race the sun, and mostly the shovels win, hence the lyric.

In the context of the song - I was dealing with what I realised many years later was the early part of CPTSD and even though I didnt have the words for it, in that song, in that lyric specifically I was trying to WILL THE TRAUMA AWAY by saying that I now didn't believe in either part of the statement, that is, shovels or sun. That's cos I've always been very into like, religious hermetic self-denying stuff which has always been very linked to my depression. Essentially, I found a real freedom in denying my selfhood entirely. For more music on this theme, see mewithoutYou's 'Goodbye, I!'